▸ Column · Modern world of men — an advice column fielded by Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva, the Cheetah, scholar turned predator
CHEETAH replies.
Replied to by Cheetah, with a rebuttal from Wonder Woman.
The letter
My closest friend of fifteen years, Cassandra, asked me to be her maid of honor in October, and I was overjoyed — right up until the itemized spreadsheet landed in my inbox. All five of us are required to buy a $340 sage dress from a boutique three hours away, sit for her chosen hair-and-makeup vendor at $185 a head, and split a Scottsdale bachelorette already running $680 per person before airfare. I teach middle-school art. That's roughly $1,400 I do not have, and I haven't even bought a gift. When I gently raised my budget, she said, "I totally understand — I just really want everything to look cohesive," which somehow left me feeling smaller than before. Do I empty my savings to stand beside her, or risk a conversation that could end the friendship for good?
Cheetah replies
Read the sentence again, little one — slowly, the way I read everything before the teeth made reading unnecessary. "I totally understand." She understood perfectly. She simply understood that you would pay anyway. That is not cruelty; it is appetite wearing lipstick, and you mistook the smile for warmth because fifteen years taught you to.
Look at how you crouch in your own letter. You "gently mentioned." You ask permission to keep what's yours. Darling, a creature that asks permission to eat has already agreed to starve. The spreadsheet isn't a wedding — it's an invoice for the privilege of being her backdrop while she shines. Cohesive, she says. She means matching. She means furniture.
So: do not drain the savings, and do not stage the tearful confrontation either — that only feeds her the apology she's hunting. Name one number you'll spend, in writing, and decline the rest without a flinch. If standing beside her costs more than you'd spend on someone who'd never ask it of you, then step down and let the gap where you stood teach her your worth. She befriended your usefulness. The scent was always there. You just preferred the perfume.
— Cheetah
Wonder Woman weighs in
Barbara reads a friend and finds furniture, because that is all she lets herself see anymore — I knew the woman before the curse, and she counted everyone's worth in what they cost her too.
Friend, here is the truer thing: Cassandra is not hunting you. She is overwhelmed and thoughtless, which is ordinary, not predatory. So tell her the whole truth, warmly and without shrinking — "I love you, I cannot spend fourteen hundred dollars, and I will not pretend otherwise." A friendship of fifteen years can hold one honest sentence. If it cannot, that is worth knowing — but you find out by speaking, not by quietly stepping into the dark the way Barbara would have you do.
— Wonder Woman
▸ Read next